Pricing Integrity In Managed IT – Part Two

Pricing Integrity In Managed IT – Part Two

‘Smoke and mirrors’ is one of the more common answers when we ask a new client why they are migrating to the Options platform from a competitor. Put another way, Options doesn’t do hidden charges. Two of our biggest competitors take the exact opposite approach. In fact, their hidden charges make Options cheaper in every single year of your contract, and in most years, we’re less than half the price of our competitors. They would have you believe otherwise.

When it comes to our pricing, we give you the guarantee of a certain monthly expenditure and meet it. Not just that but you won’t find our fixed monthly costs model almost anywhere else. The scale of our business is the key differentiator here, allowing Options to provide enterprise infrastructure at a much lower price.

Based on a three-year contract, these hidden charges, so often glossed over, make our competitors more expensive in year one, two and three. In year two and three, they will charge almost twice as much as Options. When negotiating with prospective clients, they will suggest their pricing starts at around half the price per user that Options quotes for, which is, in effective, a pseudo per user charge. The customer thinks, “For a small premium in year three I can enjoy low startup costs now” but that simply isn’t true. It is incredibly misleading and completely ignores the many other hidden charges within their contract. To reiterate, Options works out cheaper. Every. Single. Year.

So What Are Our Competitors Hiding?

On top of their ‘fixed’ monthly fee, our competitors currently include for the following hidden charges:

A very substantial site fee, even if there is only one site (Options charge based on users, not sites).

A substantial fee per phone and per conference phone (both are included in Options’ monthly price).

A data management fee per GB of user data and file sharing (again, this is included in Options’ monthly price).

An hourly support fee (something we never charge for at Options). Even one hour of support per user per month (charged in the region of $150 per hour) pushes our competitors pricing way beyond Options’ monthly fixed fee.

Considering the above, their per user charge is essentially a pseudo per user charge, and in reality, 30% more per user than Options’ charge.

Putting all these pricing differences and SLA quirks to one side for a moment, it is crucial to remember that these business relationships often last 10 years or more. Or at least they do at Options. Given that your bank or fund may be entering into a five to ten year partnership with your vendor, it is crucial to carefully consider the integrity of their pricing model and the associated incentives that drive their service levels (see part one of this post). Simply put, it will cost you, and your firm, time and money if you don’t.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have re. the above or if you’d like to get more detail on the Options platform, pricing model or approach to customer service and support.